If Park Bank is liable for not spotting Sujata "Sue" Sachdeva's $34 million embezzlement from Koss Corp. and has to reimburse the company, Koss Chief Executive Michael Koss should also be ordered to personally pay the public company he runs, the bank argues in a new lawsuit.

Grant Thornton, Koss Corp.'s former auditor, should also have to pay a portion of any award that may be ordered, Park Bank argued in the latest twist in a long-running court fight stemming from Sachdeva's massive embezzlement.

"Park Bank denies any and all liability to Koss in this case," the bank said in its action. "Nevertheless, should Park Bank be found liable to Koss (Corp.) and required to pay damages to Koss, in this case, those damages will have been the result of a common liability of Park Bank, Michael Koss and Grant Thornton, thereby entitling Park Bank to (a) contribution from Michael Koss and Grant Thornton."(10)

Blog Archive

Posts for May, 2006

Artist Dusanka Komnenic, "detained" inside a New York gallery for a week for the "AsylumNYC" art event, wasn???t allowed to bring any materials for her installation. She asked gallery visitors to bring masking tape in for her.

Local artist Dusanka Komnenic is supposed to go ???home??? in less than two months.

Home is technically Serbia, though the 29-year-old painter has been in Milwaukee for about four years, getting her master???s degree in art at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and more recently teaching drawing part time at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design,

But Komnenic won free aid from an immigration lawyer by taking the prize in the ???AsylumNYC??? contest last week, in which 10 foreign-born artists were voluntarily detained within a New York gallery for a week and asked to create a work of art.

The 10 finalists were chosen from a field of more than 200 applicants from all over the world. The contestants were given a space, marked off by masking tape, a foam mattress, a notebook and a pen.

They were not allowed to speak to one another or cross their individual ???borders.??? Their luggage was searched and in some cases temporarily ???seized,??? and the artists were not permitted to have materials for making their artworks.

Part art exhibit, social experiment, performance, intellectual game and commentary on the state of immigration laws, ???AsylumNYC??? was supposed to recreate and present the uncertain nature of the immigrant experience.

???I assumed that I would leave,??? said Komnenic, adding that the rules weren???t entirely clear until she arrived at the White Box Gallery. ???But I thought, ???You want a game? You???ll get a game.??????

Komnenic asked gallery visitors to bring her black and white tape, much like the tape that defined the border of her space on the gallery floor.

???Within my space, I just created a pattern, placing stripes one next to the other,??? she said, making her assigned borders difficult to distinguish from the lines she put on the floor.

By expanding the pattern of tape on the floor, Komnenic expanded what appeared to be her space in the gallery. Eventually, she covered herself in the tape, covering her t-shirt and putting white stripes in her black hair.

???I extended my borders to where ever I go,??? she said.

The organizers, from Wooloo Productions, said Komnenic was the one ???who broke the most rules without breaking a single one,??? Komnenic said.

Komnenic met with Daniel Aharoni, the immigration lawyer who will try to help her obtain a visa for artists, good for three years, on Saturday and then returned to Milwaukee.

???We have to be aware of all of the rules all of the time,??? said Komnenic of her own immigrant experience, relating it to the art event. ???It is always confusing???and seems impossible to overcome.???$ | May 1, 2006

Three artists have been chosen as finalists for what could be one of the city's more visible public art projects in some time. The winner will create public art for one Milwaukee's most important corridors, Wisconsin Avenue.

The finalists are Janet Zweig, Behard & Marquardt and Robert Drummond, according to a member of the selection committee. The commission is projected to be about $200,000, though it is unclear how much of that will be used for installation and maintenance, if any.

Rumor has it that Zweig is the frontrunner for the moment among the arty types on the selection committee, formed by the city's Department of Public Works. But the artists have not been interviewed yet, which could change things considerably. Those members with art expertise include Curtis Carter of the Haggerty Museum, David Gordon of the Milwaukee Art Museum, Mike Brenner of Hotcakes Gallery and others.

Zweig makes sculpture, artists' books and public artworks. Her work has been shown at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Exit Art, PS1 Museum and Cooper Union. Among her public artworks is a frieze at the Prince Street subway station for New York's Arts for Transit. She lives in Brooklyn.

Roberto Behar and Rosario Marquardt work as an artist-architect team, based in Miami. They create work that is part painting, architecture, urbanism and public art, according to their web site.

Drummond is an installation artist who frequently uses live video performance, as well as site-specific architectural and sculptural components. He has shown at VTO gallery in London, Ground Zero in Marina del Rey and DCA gallery in Venice, California.

The selection committee is scheduling interviews with the artists now.$ | May 10, 2006

For many years, a painting by Kees van Dongen hung in the salon of fashion giant Norman Norell. In the 1940s, he had spotted the portrait of the Marquise Cassati walking along a Venice canal and bought it for a mere $125.

It was, in fact, the inspiration for his first collection as Norman Norell Inc. in 1960, called the ???Van Dongen Collection,??? including the shimmering sheaths known as the ???mermaid??? dress.

The mermaid dresses had a 1920s flapper flair and became the most expensive dresses in America at the time, selling for $3,500, the equivalent of about $15,000 today. Lauren Bacall slipped into a black mermaid in ???Applause??? and Jane Fonda donned one in blue for ???Klute.???

Peg Bradley, a Milwaukee art collector and patron, as well as the owner of local fashion shops, saw the Van Dongen painting when she was in New York and tried to convince Norell to part with what had become his prized possession.

Norell declined, but Bradley purchased the painting from Norell???s estate after he died in 1972. Of the hundreds of works she owned, it was her favorite painting.

The Milwaukee Art Museum will bring the painting and the mermaid dress that Peg Bradley also owned together tonight for a fashion show, part of the celebration surrounding the reinstallation of the Bradley Collection. The event will showcase the collections of Bradley's still operating shops, Zita's and Peg Bradley's. It is from 5:30 to 9 p.m. and tickets are $50 or $75.

Bradley donated the Van Dongen painting, ???The Quai, Venice,??? to the Milwaukee Art Museum in 1973. Tonight will be the last chance to see the painting for some time, since it is about to be loaned to another museum for an exhibition.$ | May 11, 2006

Kent Mueller opened what is arguably Milwaukee's first alternative art gallery and was one of the few that managed to stay open for more than a handful of years.

After about eight years, however, Kent Mueller's KM art will close, on June 23.

Kent has always been on the edge, balancing a day job and finances to keep the gallery up and running. The list of reasons to stay open has always been longer than the list of reasons to close, until now, he says.

Milwaukee has never been particularly hospitable to local art dealers, particularly those interested in more avant-garde work. But Kent knew that and tried to keep costs low, so that even modest sales would keep the gallery afloat. We should all be ashamed that KM art has not received enough support to remain open.

This is a blow to our art scene. Though the streets were filled with people on Gallery Night, more people than I personally have ever seen out for that event, only a handful of galleries keep the standards high. Fewer set aside commercial interests to the extent necessary to make meaningful art the priority.

Is that pie in the sky? An unreasonable goal?

With the recent losses of General Store in Riverwest, Inova at UWM (though not in name) and Hermetic Gallery, which was opened by Nicholas Frank right beside KM art in the historic industrial building at 226 S. 1st St., as well as the on-the-brink status of Hotcakes Gallery, I do wonder whether a certain quality is being lost to our art scene, with little notice or concern from the community.

Look at a slideshow of KM art's current show and ask yourself whether we can stand to lose such a gallery.$ | May 11, 2006

Artist Della Wells opened her first museum show at the Charles Allis Art Museum, 1801 N. Prospect Ave., on Wednesday night. The show, full of bright oil and pastel paintings, collage, found object assemblages and a few small sculptures is a nice survey of an artist who is very well regarded beyond Wisconsin???s borders and under valued here at home.

Her work incorporates stories and images from her home life, a personal form of folklore seasoned with her interests in sociology, feminism and African-American studies. Of all of it, the collages stand out above the rest. Look for my review in the Journal Sentinel in the coming days.

To get a sense of the "Don't Tell Me I Can't Fly"show, look at this slideshow of images from the opening reception. General admission to the museum: $5 adults, $3 seniors, free for members, students and military. Information: (414) 278-8295.

The student thesis show at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, 273 E. Erie St., will close after today. Two artists to look for:

Liz De DeckerThe thick, impasto feel of Liz's paint work looks, at first glance, to be hurriedly scraped across wood blocks or canvases, when in reality more thoughtfully composed landscapes emerge from the works.

Part urban landscape, part abstraction, Liz's works appear to be influenced by the work of her painting instructor Michael Howard, who also creates works that hint at architecture and play with surface.

Liz, a senior painting major at MIAD, won the first Folliard Gallery Project award, which is designed to support emerging talent from MIAD. The award offers one student the experience of working with a professional gallery as well as a chance to exhibit work at the Tory Folliard Gallery, 233 N. Milwaukee St., where Liz's work is also on view.

Katrina MotleyThe first time I saw Katrina's work, I was walking through MIAD's studios with the daughter of a colleague, who was shopping around for art schools. Josie Osborne, director of community outreach, pointed out Katrina's small work space.

Inside was a large canvas with the back side of an African American woman's head. I struck by the image and intrigued by the unusual choice of subject. There was so much personality in the back of that head, the face entirely out of view.

These few years later, at MIAD's graduate show I saw a grouping of paintings and knew instantly it was her. These works were smaller, more luscious, really.

In them, Katrina shows us how defining a sweeping braid or a crisscrossing part in the hair can be, successfully conveying a sense of who these faceless people are. And though deeply personal, Katrina also shows us how beautiful these lines and forms are in the abstract, elevating the stylings of African American hair to a form of folk art in its own right through her paintings.

Rumor has it, at least one local curator has an eye on Katrina.

My colleague Crocker Stephenson included Katrina in his "Snapshots" feature on Monday.

Local artist Regan Golden-McNerney, a recent graduate of the Univeristy of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in painting and drawing, received a $10,000 Joan Mitchell Foundation grant.

Given for artistic merit to recent MFA graduates, the award is the first given to a UWM grad. Golden-McNerney was nominated by the visual art department's graduate program director, Lane Hall.

Golden-McNerney plans to use the grant award to create a series of works on paper that explore Nathaniel Hawthorne's description of the New England woods in "The Scarlet Letter." She has already exhibited her work locally and nationally.

Images of Golden-McNerney's work can be found on her web site and blog.

Joan Mitchell was an Abstract Expressionist painter who grew up in Chicago and eventually settled near Paris, where she worked until the time of her death in 1992. The Joan Mitchell Foundation was established the following year to provide aid to contemporary artists.$ | May 16, 2006

Well, we do sit at the center of North America, the heart of the land, as they say, or so say some local artists, curators and gallery owners who are working to put on the city???s first alternative, international art fair.

From the looks of things, what these art savants have in mind is the kind of fair that typically might be a ???satellite??? to a larger, more established fair like New York???s Armory or Art Basel Miami. Such big fairs are costly to the galleries that partake, galleries that pay high prices for tiny booths which are trolled by collectors with money to burn. The satellite events, like Scope or DiVA in New York or Chicago???s now defunct Stray Show, though, are more about bringing art and ideas into contact with people (and crossing fingers for sales).

The fair, which has a working title of Milwaukee International is tentatively scheduled for October, may not be a done deal, but those who are apparently signed on so far are evidence of something new and promising in the making. Local participants include General Store (which closed its physical gallery some time ago), the relatively new Green Gallery, Hermetic (also no longer a physical gallery but a curatorial force, among other things), Jody Monroe and Hotcakes Gallery.

As time periods and locales go, few were as popular with the would-be art historians I was surrounded by in college as the 19th century and France. Personally, I got stuck back in the Middle Ages and wondered how all of these Francophiles filling the field would ever get jobs.

As it turns out, though, the art world needs a goodly number of 19th century specialists in French art because it''''''''s a moment in time that has proved to be increasingly popular with the general public as well.

It was, after all, a time when modern life was evolving into something new, with dramatic political and cultural shifts, remarkable progress in areas of technology, communication and transportation. Artists also wrested free of the past as well, staging alternative exhibitions and creating a thriving avant-garde.

For those with a taste for that time period, "Géricault to Toulouse-Lautrec: Nineteenth-Century French Prints" opens today at the Milwaukee Art Museum. It is a survey of pintmaking trends from the period featuring artists such as Delacroix, Corot, Manet, Gaugin, Millet and Toulouse-Lautrec. The show is in the smaller Koss Gallery.

And speaking of 19th century specialists, it''''''''s worth noting that we''''''''re very lucky to have Mary Weaver Chapin at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Prior to her arrival at MAM, she served as the co-curator for the popular "Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmarte" exhibit, which was shown at the Art Institute in Chicago and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Weaver Chapin was recently shifted to a new position and named assistant curator of prints and drawings.$ | May 25, 2006

I was thinking today about the first time I had a real coversation with Michael Lord, the gallery owner who was sentenced to more than a year in jail this afternoon for taking money from more than a dozen people who trusted them with their art.

We sat in his now-closed gallery where a high wall in his office was filled with bookshelves heavy with art books.

Michael talked about bringing the work of Robert Mapplethorpe to Milwaukee some years earlier, when that was a pretty risky thing to do. He had introduced the city to work that might never have otherwise been seen here.

A big part of what Michael accomplished with his gallery was exactly this -- providing people with utterly unique opportunities to experience art. For a time, no other gallery compared.

He was so proud and genuinely delighted about the Mapplethorpe exhibit and others like it -- and it had absolutely nothing to do with selfishness. When you love art, truly, it is easy to spot that kind of passion for art in others. It's not just an intellectual exercise, it's about an essential curiosity about human nature.

And that is what I saw in Michael that day.

This genuineness may be why people trusted Michael when they should not have. And this is what made his crimes so profoundly inexcusable. He did not just rob more than a dozen people of more than $600,000. He did this to his friends.

In some ways, he did it to all of us. As a community, we have less in terms of art without the Michael H. Lord Gallery, which is certainly gone for good. $ | May 25, 2006(2)

The Milwaukee Artists Resource Network, a support organization for local artists, has been named as the non-profit group that would run a possible arts incubator on Milwaukee???s East Side, according to Mike Brenner, president of MARN???s board of directors.

The incubator would house low-cost studios for artists, gallery space, workshop spaces and facilities for various media, such as printmaking. It is possible that the building would also rent space art-related and creative businesses like an art supply store or a graphic design firm.

The East Side Business Improvement District (BID) introduced the idea and moved things forward by conducting a feasibility study, which was released last fall. The study demonstrated that an incubator would have a positive impact on East Side businesses generally and bring increasingly vitality to the arts community, providing incentives for emerging artists to remain in Milwaukee. The study also noted the next step would be to identify a group to operate the incubator.

The BID and MARN are now working together on forming a business plan and identifying possible buildings in the BID area for the incubator. The BID???s boundaries are E. North Ave., between the Milwaukee River and N. Prospect Ave.; N. Farwell Ave.; N. Prospect Ave.; and N. Murray Ave.

In addition to work spaces, the incubator would offer artists with services or training in areas such as r??sum?? and grant writing, business planning and marketing. Programming for the community also would be part of the plan, with exhibitions, performances and workshops.

The BID was created in 1998 and consists of 70 commercial properties with an assessed value of more than $45 million. It is run by a board of directors comprised of property and business owners. The BID is run by Jim Plaisted and has been involved in shaping the redevelopment plan for the Kenilworth Building and the expansion plan of Columbia-St. Mary???s.

MARN was established about five years ago and is dedicated to providing practical support to individual artists, providing access to workshops and professional resources. It is run by painter Melissa Dorn Richards and also runs a listserv for artists.$ | May 30, 2006

When most people think of public art, what comes to mind more often than not is something huge, resilient, and abstract. Mark di Suvero's bright orange steel "The Calling" installed at the eastern end of Wisconsin Ave., for instance.

Who knew that public art could be fleeting and made from shopping bags and plastic foam cups?

Across the country, the idea of temporary public art is gaining some attention as an alternative to the giant monoliths.

A local group dedicated to promoting fun and encouraging surprising artworks for Milwaukee streets will be completing its first project between now and Wednesday (much is already finished). It will be on view for a number of weeks. The "North Avenue Gateway" project features several individual art projects along North Ave. between 35th and 38th streets, ready to be explored.

On the one hand, the works, created by nine local artists, are meant to be a delight, something new to bump into as you pass by a storefront or street corner. On the other hand, the art is clustered in an area so that people who know about it can take a tour of the project on foot, too. (See listing below).

In so many ways, the project is an open and inclusive one. It puts art out on the streets rather than inside elitist institutions, making it accessible to a wider array of people.

The Gateway project also showcases the work of artists of various ages and diverse backgrounds, including a Navajo artist, African-Americans, Hmong needleworkers and a woman from Japan.

It also fosters neighborhood communication about art. For example, the manager of the Lighthouse Christian Book Store and a Hmong social worker met and collaborated on an exhibit of Hmong needlework, to be placed in the bookshop's store front. A quiet and tucked-away storefront church opened its doors to allow an artist to create a projection in the window, visible in the evenings.

And all of this for a price tag just under $2,000.

The temporary exhibition, which is putting art in a part of Milwaukee where public art rarely is seen, is organized by In:Site and the North Avenue Community Development Corp., with sponsorship from the Gateway Business Improvement District and several property owners.

Get out and tour these works, most of which will be up this weekend for a tour by many of the attendees of the Americans for the Arts National Conference:

Southeast corner of 35th and North Ave.: Painted wood panels by Matthew Kirk.

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Keep up with the art scene and trends in urban design with art and architecture critic Mary Louise Schumacher. Every week, you'll get the latest reviews, musings on architecture and her picks for what to do on the weekends.